


sick shark babies

by incensuous



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, Sibling Fluff, i just need rin/gou being fluffy siblings while sousuke sits there like 'what else is new'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:21:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2593328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incensuous/pseuds/incensuous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Gou got sick as a kid, nothing made her feel better than sleeping next to her big brother. So, when Rin gets sick, Gou takes it upon herself to take care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sick shark babies

A seven year old redhead frowns as his sensitive ears pick up a muffled cough for the thousandth time in that hour.

“Gou, you’re sick,” he points out bluntly. “You need to take medicine.”

His six year old sister petulantly shakes her small head. “No, I feel fine.”

He turns around at his desk to stare at Gou, all curled up in her bed, trying to read her favorite book, the one that she always begged their mother to read to her, even when she could do it herself. He’s made the effort to shift his body just so that she can get a full view of his spectacular eye roll.

“Take the medicine or else you’ll get worse and then you’ll get everyone sick. If I get sick, mom won’t let me swim,” he grumbles, as he stands up to walk out of their shared bedroom. He figures he’s getting too old to be sharing his room with his baby sister but it seems like Gou would never be able to take care of herself if he’s not there.

He asks his mom where the cold medicine is and Gou frowns. How could he betray her! She’d done a good job of not coughing too loud so that their mom wouldn’t realize her daughter had been feeling under the weather.

Just as Rin finishes asking their mother, the Matsuoka matron comes in herself with a stern but gentle look with the tell tale small plastic cup, filled with purple liquid.

“Gou, it’ll make you feel better, I promise,” their mother insists. “I’ll let you eat some candy afterwards, okay?”

“Mom, I feel fine,” Gou refutes and backs her small body up to the edge of her bed, as far away as she can get without falling off.

Rin bounds into the room and tries to sweeten the deal for his sister. “I’ll let you pick the next TV show we watch. For a whole hour,” he adds, almost reluctantly.

Gou’s red eyes switch between the two members of her immediate family. She purses her small lips and breathes deeply before grimacing as only a six year old can.

Sensing her daughter relenting, Ms. Matsuoka swoops in and holds Gou’s mouth open.

“Pinch your nose, it’ll help,” she gently warns.

When Gou doesn’t move, Rin knows from experience that their mother speaks the truth, and reaches over to pinch Gou’s little nose for her.

Gou fidgets, threatening to have the cough syrup spill, and she whines but manages to swallow it all. Her face is mottled in her displeasure and as soon as she gets her mouth clear, their mother knowingly pops a candy into her daughter’s mouth.

Rin watches as Gou sucks on the treat, still seeming unhappy from her traumatizing ordeal. Still, by the time they’re getting ready for bed, Gou’s coughing stops signficantly. When their mother measures her temperature, she’s displeased to see that Gou’s fever is still high, and instructs her to get a lot of rest that night.

Therefore, after Rin brushes his teeth, he climbs into bed. But instead of his own mattress, he’s situated himself next to Gou in her pastel comforter and she’s surprised by the sudden intrusion from her brother. Rin wants to explain to her that he knows she likes to sleep next to him, so for her to get the best rest, it’s only natural that as her big brother, he’d sleep next to her to help her achieve this goal.

But rather than questioning it, she simply puts on her animal-printed face mask and happily snuggles close to his side. Rin huffs before closing his eyes and dozing off.

His sleep is so restful that when he wakes up the next morning, he almost doesn’t mind when his sister declares, “I want to watch Sailor Moon!” Almost.

 

* * *

 

Samezuka is a good enough distance away from Iwatobi that try as she might, Gou honestly feels out of touch from her brother’s life. On a beautiful Friday, she decides to surprise her brother with a visit.

She texts him briefly, hoping he isn’t too busy. _Are you in your room?_

She waits outside the dorm building, staring at her phone’s screen. She beams when the screen lights up. It is only recently that Rin had been replying to her texts. She doesn’t even mind that they’re barely a few words and very sparingly given; she’ll take what she can get.

_Yeah, why?_

_Come down and let me in!_

_What? Why are you here?_

Gou is just about to type up a reply when another follows. _Never mind, be down in a minute._

The dorm building’s door opens, and Gou widens her eyes at the sight. Her brother looks terrible.

Well, as terrible as Rin can when he possesses muscles like his, which are strangely covered up by a large sweater on a warm 70 degree day. “Onii-chan!” Gou exclaims, running towards him, her hair bouncing behind her.

He frowns. “What are you doing here, Gou?”

“I just wanted to visit,” Gou pouts before peering closer at his face. “Good thing I did. How long have you been sick?”

Rin looks at her in surprise. “What do you mean? I’m not sick.”

The younger Matsuoka stares at him, entirely unconvinced. “If only you had told me, I would’ve asked Mom to make some soup to bring over.”

For a second, Gou thinks that her brother is going to try and keep up the charade, insisting that he’s only tired from studying and not suffering from the flu. Instead, he sighs and shrugs. “It’s okay, I can take care of myself.” Gou realizes he must _really_ be sick if he let the topic go that easily.

“Of course I know that, but you don’t have to,” she retorts haughtily before dragging him towards the proctor to have her signed in.

Once they make it to his dorm room, Gou spies Sousuke reclining on the top bunk. “Sousuke-kun!”

At the sound of his name, the dark-haired teen peers down. Smiling, he greets her. “Hey Gou. So that’s who Rin was texting.” He hops down onto the floor. “Did you stop by because he was sick?”

Gou shakes her head. “I had no idea.” After admitting her lack of knowledge, she turns to glare at her brother, who pointedly looks away.

“I’m the older one here, Gou,” he argues, wincing as a cough breaks his sentence. “It’s not even that bad.”

Gou turns to face Sousuke again. “And you!” She suddenly points an accusatory finger at her brother’s best friend. “You didn’t tell me!”

Sousuke is caught off guard. “Wha—?”

“Gou,” Rin places his hands on her shoulders to calm down his sister. “Hey, I told him not to tell you, okay?”

The seventeen year old falters. “But why didn’t you want me to know?”

“He didn’t want you to worry,” Sousuke supplies, helpfully. “He always says you have a lot on your own plate.”

Upon hearing that, Gou spins around. Rin expects to hear something along the lines of “thanks onii-chan, you’re the best,” but instead, she smacks his arm. Hard.

“Hey! Gou, what—”

“Stupid onii-chan,” Gou scolds, while frowning and the expression reminds Rin of himself. “You’re my only brother, I’ll always worry!” Then, she whirls back to Sousuke who looks as if he is a young deer facing a well-armed hunter. “Sousuke-kun, how long has onii-chan been sick?”

“Three days.”

“Sousuke!” Rin squawks at being given away so easily by his friend. He doesn’t get a chance to say much else before small hands are pushing at his back. The red-haired Samezuka captain finds himself being steered towards his own bed and Gou peers around the room once she’s done shoving her brother around.

“Have you been getting any rest at all? Don’t tell me you’ve been running around half-naked when you’re sick, onii-chan.”

“Things have been really busy, Gou, I’m the _captain_ —”

“What about taking your medicine?”

Suddenly feeling like a child again, Rin purses his lips while Gou turns her gaze on him.

Again, Sousuke feels that it’s an opportune moment for him to intervene. “He hasn’t.”

Rin fixes his death glare onto the teal-eyed teen. “Why, you…”

“I’m going to the store right now,” Gou declares, before turning to Rin with a pleading expression. “Try to get some rest, I’ll be back soon.”

Rin is about to argue, _I have a paper due, I have a test next week, regionals are coming up_ … but he makes the mistake of looking at Gou’s face, with her large, glossy eyes and small pout. His words die on his tongue and he sulks before nodding and lying down.

As Gou happily beams and turns away, Rin plans on the ways he’s gonna kick Sousuke’s ass the second his sister is out the door.

“Sousuke-kun, do you mind coming with me?”

The man in question startles at being addressed, his attention being on warily eyeing Rin. “Me?”

“Who else?”

Rin gapes. Why was she asking _Sousuke_ to come with her?

Oh, that’s right. They must’ve gotten quite close in elementary school, after he had left for Australia. But still, if anyone is going to go with his sister to the store, it should be her own brother!

“Wait, Gou, let me come,” Rin protests, shoving off the covers he’d bundled around himself.

Gou swiftly fixes him with a stern glare. “Where do you think you’re going?” She presses a hand to his forehead. “You’re burning up and you’re shaking. Stay in bed.”

For years to come, Rin will fervently deny pouting when his sister instructs his eighteen year old self to _take a goddamn nap_ and refuses to let him tag along with her and Sousuke.

He resigns himself to the mattress to wait for the two of them to come home with his medicine, mulling to himself that he’d have to threaten Sousuke within an inch of his life to never let the rest of the Samezuka team find out about his predicament.

It takes almost twenty minutes for them to return and by then, Rin has fallen into a fitful sleep, his red fringe clinging to his sweating forehead.

Gou gently shakes her brother awake to coerce him into taking some medication, with a glass of water. She makes a mental note to take a trip to the grocery store on her way home.

For the next hour or so, Gou finds herself fussing over Rin and the older Matsuoka is too tired to care. The swim club manager finds topics to chatter away about to Sousuke and Rin, who occasionally pitch in. Eventually, Rin drifts off to sleep again and Gou decides that it’s getting late. She says goodbye to Sousuke then presses a kiss to Rin’s forehead, when she thinks Sousuke isn’t looking.

. . .

When Gou returns to the Samezuka dorms the next afternoon, she’s again worried that her brother will be too busy to reply to her. Instead, a familiar face appears at the doorway to invite her in but it’s not the face she’d been expecting.

“Sousuke-kun? Where’s onii-chan?”

“Rin’s taking a nap,” Sousuke grins down at the girl he’s practically adopted as his sister. “I saw his phone was vibrating. Figured it was you.”

“Onii-chan? Napping?” Gou repeats in disbelief. The eighteen year old glances at the large pot she has in her hands. It looks heavy, so without even asking, he takes it easily from her grasp.

She gives him her thanks and they quietly make their way to his and Rin’s dorm. True to Sousuke’s word, they find Rin tucked into his blankets. At least he looks a little more comfortable than last night.

“He slept in this morning, barely made it to practice. Then, he came home and fell asleep again,” Sousuke informs her.

“He didn’t even go for a jog?” Gou inquires, incredulously. If she knew one thing about her brother, he _always_ stuck to his exercise regimen.

Sousuke shakes his head, his expression grim. “It’s that serious,” he agrees with her shocked expression.

Gou sighs. “I hate to wake him up, but he should take his medicine and needs to eat.” She gently shakes Rin’s shoulder through the blanket and instead of the usual no-nonsense waking up Sousuke had come to expect, Rin burrows further into his sheets.

With some more nudging, Rin finally blearily opens his eyes.

“Wha…? Gou?” He furrows his brows. “What time is it?”

“It’s four P.M., on Saturday, onii-chan,” she whispers, treating him as if he was a child. Rin doesn’t pay her delicate attitude any mind, and instead groans.

“I didn’t even do my morning jog…”

“That’s not important,” Gou waves his concerns over the loss of muscle tone away and brandishes two pills and a bottle of water. “Take these.”

He obliges and finally pushes himself into a sitting position. His skin is flustered and sweaty from the slumber spent under thick blankets, the cool evening air making him shiver.

Gou frowns and sets to microwaving some of the soup. It’s only then that Rin notices the large pot sitting on his desk. He blinks as the smell wafts to him, reminding him of his childhood. He probably hadn’t had that soup in years.

“Did Mom make that?” he asks, his voice raspy from sleep.

He watches as Gou blushes and for a second he’s worried that he’s infected her with his flu. Then she shakes her head. “No, I made it.” She turns around with the bowl. “It’s probably not as good, but it’ll be easier to digest than the food from your cafeteria.”

Rin takes the ceramic from her hands and sips at the liquid. He feels the warmth pool in his stomach and the tendrils of heat curling around his body.

“It tastes like Mom’s,” he says nonchalantly before taking more spoonfuls. Gou lights up as he says this, taking it as a rare compliment from her precious brother.

The two red-haired siblings are sitting on Rin’s bottom bunk, while Sousuke is at his desk. Much like last night, Gou rambles to Rin, who tries to pretend he's indifferent when she does this. Sousuke knows better though and listens to the two of them talk. Sometimes, they’d include him, but after all these years, he still remembers how close the two were when they were younger.

Part of him is annoyed at Rin for ignoring Gou all this time. He remembers when she had eventually turned to him and asked if he’d heard anything from her brother. And it was then that Sousuke realized that Rin was desperately trying to distance himself from something from Japan, if he’d even taken to ignoring his sister.

As Gou is the manager of the Iwatobi swim club, it makes sense that a lot of their conversation revolves around its members. Sousuke isn’t blind—he is completely aware that Gou is hardly athletic and it’s far too coincidental that she just so happened to join the swim club full of the very same people that Rin had transferred to Iwatobi for. Then he ponders to himself absently if his sharp-toothed friend is aware that she’d done all that just for him.

Gou mentions how she’d been trying to learn how to cook more things recently. When Rin asks what had brought on this new curiosity, she beams and informs him that the Iwatobi swim club is aspiring to ingest healthier meals.

“Huh?” Rin blinks. “Then that means you cook for all four of them?”

She nods excitedly. “But Nagisa-kun is the only one who actually likes the protein powder,” she pouts.

Rin grimaces. “Even I don’t like protein powder.”

“Not even the strawberry banana kind?”

The two male teens gag at the very mention of the supplement. “That’s the worst!”

Pitying his old relay team, Rin decides to give his sister better tips on incorporating healthy protein into meals fit for any swimmer.

“I can’t believe you make lunch for four grown men,” Sousuke comments. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Rin pouting. Gou is oblivious as she is seated right next to his side. He can’t help himself from adding, “You shouldn’t feel jealous, Rin. She made you soup, after all.”

The Samezuka swim captain’s face colors and he barks, “As if, Yamazaki!”

Gou giggles and holds her brother’s arm tighter. “Onii-chan, I’ll visit you more often then,” she announces.

“No! You don’t have to do that,” Rin unnecessarily shouts, before having a coughing fit. Gou’s face is horrified.

“Oh no, how could I have forgotten? You’re sick, and I’ve been keeping you up instead of letting you rest,” she fusses, before maneuvering her six foot tall brother into a supine position on the bed.

He attempts to protest but realizes it would have been futile. He’s feeling a little sleepy anyways. Gou makes sure he’s completely covered by his sheets before lifting up the corner and tucking herself in beside him.

Rin blinks, surprised and is about to tell her she should go home, they might get in trouble, but Gou anticipates his arguments and refutes them the best way she knows how. She clasps her hands and stares pleadingly into his eyes. “You’ll sleep better this way, remember, onii-chan?”

For a moment, he’s about to ask what she means, but then he remembers a week of listening to Gou’s coughs and sneezes, nights spent sharing the same bed, coupled with several mornings of “ _in the name of the moon, I will punish you!_ ”

His eyes soften before sighing and simply says, “Go get my mask.”

Gou lights up and rummages through his desk before returning and loops the strings of the plain black face mask behind his ears.

She texts their mother informing her she’d be staying the night at her brother’s dorm. Then he tells her to take one of his shirts to sleep in and she eagerly looks through his drawers, making a mess that he’d have to clean up tomorrow, before fishing out one of his old black tees. She slips into the bathroom to change and when she returns with her hair down and her clothes draped over her arms, Sousuke has already made his way to his own bunk, turning off the lights.

“Good night, Sousuke-kun,” Gou chirrups, worming her way into Rin’s side and resting her head on his chest, like when they were children. In response, he curls his arm underneath her to wrap around her shoulders.

“Night, Gou,” Sousuke replies, his tone amused. “Night, Rin.”

Rin grunts in response, already feeling the effects of a long day spent battling his illness. “Night.”

“Good night, onii-chan.” The Iwatobi swim club manager leans up to press a kiss to his cheek.

He cracks open an eye to peer down at the top of Gou’s head. “Night,” he says again, but in a softer tone. When she returns to duck her head under his jaw, he turns his head so that his lips press gently against her forehead through the thin fabric covering his face.

Gou’s eyes widen slightly before sighing happily and drifts off to sleep, but not before murmuring, “Love you, onii-chan.”

She isn’t sure if she’s already dreaming when a moment later, her brother mumbles, “Love you too.”


End file.
